Engaging our employees on climate change

Reducing our own carbon footprint has long been an important element of our efforts to tackle climate change. In parallel with the many operational actions we have taken (see “Our Greenhouse Neutral Programme”), we also wanted to raise awareness of the issue among our employees and encourage them to take action themselves. This is why in 2007 we launched the CO_you2 Programme, offering our employees subsidies of up to 50% for a range of investments to help them reduce their private carbon footprints. To our knowledge, it was the first global corporate initiative of its kind at the time.

The programme has been a resounding success. In the 14 years between 2007 and 2020, it paid out more than 33 000 subsidies, engaging over 15 000 employees in the process. The main product categories were home appliances, home infrastructure and mobility. If all investments are used regularly over their full lifetime, we estimate that our employees and their households will have potentially avoided over 70 000 tonnes of CO₂.

But 14 years on, we have raised our own ambitions to a new level. Therefore, we have decided to let the CO_you2 Programme expire at the end of 2020 and replace it with a new employee programme to be introduced in 2021. It will be designed to complement the significant business and operational initiatives we have launched to achieve our net-zero emission targets – and, in line with this, encourage our employees to follow our motto to “do our best, remove the rest” (see “Achieving net-zero emissions in our operations by 2030” and “Introducing our triple-digit Carbon Steering Levy”).